When parking your car at any mall in our area, you are always given a ticket from an electronic device. Sometimes you pay before parking and other times you pay after. When exiting the parking garage, you will always give the ticket back to a mall parking attendant.
HOWEVER, what happens when the electronic device is broken? Do the rules still apply?
Apparently, if you do not make sure to get a ticket, you will be violating all the "laws" of mall parking garages and will be treated as such. I know, you are probably thinking..laws are enforced in India? But apparently, at certain times or with certain people, laws are applicable.
The other night we were going to the mall and this exact situation occurred. There were mall attendants standing there whom we asked to give us a ticket. They told us it was broken and to just go on and park. We did so and had a great time. But when we went to leave, we had no ticket to give, but willingly paid the 30 rupees to park. The little man at the booth told us it was 40 rupees and then had us pull to the side for just a moment. We waited and waited. Tempted to just drive off, but didn't as we want to be good tourists. That's when the head of mall security approached our vehicle, asked us many questions about our car, took down the license plate number, and insisted we give him our vehicle registration papers. He claimed it was standard procedure, but we were quite skeptical! Just to be careful, we called our good friend who is a lawyer to help deal with the situation. During the conversation, the security guard wanted to see JP's driver's licence to record his information. That's when we put our foot down! He insinuated many things about us: we possibly stole the car, we didn't pay the parking, etc.. It was such an odd situation, but our lawyer friend was such a great help. He got us out of it and then, when we told the security guard we had already paid 40 rupees for parking, the attendant lied and said we had only paid 30. Thankfully, our reaction seemed to scare the little man, and he immediately gave us our 10 rupees back.
Again, it was such an odd situation, but one I know we just needed to learn for the future and to blog about for others! So here are the 2 lessons we hope you learn from this:
1. Always get a ticket, no matter what from someone, when entering the parking garage of a mall otherwise you may never get out! HA HA!
2. Try to make friends with an Indian lawyer to help you in silly, enforced matters such as not having a little parking ticket!
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